And vengeance
by KittiMarlowe
Summary: When you believe in love at first sight, you never stop looking.AragornLegolas. Modern day, AU.
1. Chapter 1

Prologue

_When you believe in love at first sight, you never stop looking._

There is a little dent in the universe like there are many others. This one where a clumsy, unlovely, graceless affair was wrapt up with little love and too much preoccupation with others things. It never bloomed, then it died and faded away.

It was in a land of stone where sunset came like jellyfish and astonished honey to be the sweetest thing you could find in a day; love and a lamp would flow into each other at this time, and be just a tiny spark—like a tear in your hand. Can the children here me—can they hear fishwives crying: fresh trout! Fresh trout!—can they hear the milkmaid as the wind goes singing through her white flounced knees—or the mermaid—nor the growing of grass?

That is Gondor, once restored.

The citadel rises like a stern ghost out my memory; it was still and tall then. There is the sound of marching and murmuring always, always.

In the libraries there was the sound of fresh paper and old books humming to each other.

There was the queen who was so tremendously mortal that she did die after all.

This too is Gondor, once restored.

- -

Arwen was as ardent as wine and fleshly flowers when she was alive and even in death she was gracious. There was no crying from her; she understood life and death.

They had a funeral and all, I'm not so sure I remember, but I do know how it felt. It was a cold day, a little bitter as winter counted her pennies with her thin frugal fingers and decided she could no longer afford to keep the land warm. Farmers reaped nothing but snow. People sat huddled around stoves and fireplaces. The snow fell, upon all the living and all the dead.

She was still very beautiful, so beautiful that it casts a shadow over my memory and me even. The life left her body, the king clutched her hand but even he could not make her stay, so he became a lonely king. On that day snow began to fall, he wore snowflakes like a crown of thorns; they have meaning I cannot read with my eternal eyes.

There is something about love unreturned, that it cannot be sullied—that is its beauty. It is also painful—just like a crown of thorns worn—it hurt me because I could never tell him, I merely waited by his side, until the sea would take me away.

* * *

Perhaps it was not unrequited love but the possibility of love: I remember those slim, infatuated white hands—like my mother's hands, elf-hands—I remember those cool hands on my forehead when I had a fever and that voice like woodwinds and still pools; I remember my father's sternness, his moodiness and voice like snow.

I remember them together on drizzling evenings, other days golden like mellow honey and the flying arrow-shafts gleaming through the summer sun; Legolas never failed but perhaps his senses led him to a quiet secret spot that told him he must be silent.

_Eldarion suspected that perhaps, perhaps one could have more than one true love in a lifetime though the fairytales claimed that was false._

_They never did make the confessions, but Eldarion kept track of them._

_He was a perceptive boy, that was one of the sparkling qualities that made him a good king._

_Love fades, but it can never truly die._

* * *

He held his hand, the man was dying and deaf and blind, the windows were shut. It was deep in winter, the wind felt like an assault, he had said.

The elf contemplated.

-You will always have my love.

He slipped out, an apparition in black and silver. He would continue to love; after all, he had pledged his loyalty.


	2. Chapter 2

2

In the course of history there have been many Ages: those well-documented, others less—for example, before Man's creation there were others, magic like wild silk which was eventually forgotten, abandoned to the broken ship of the past, the other creatures faded away. There was more history, some of unintelligible—but Man's birth has always been a mystery, Darwin tried to decode its livid hieroglyphs, the world tried its best to believe him.

But archeology states very solid facts, so let's not discuss with the birth of Man but what he decided to do with the life that comes after birth.

First came the Stone Age, then the Iron Age, and in a vague flurry of fads, trends, cultural revolutions and wiping out of certain other traditions—good thing too, say certain young people: all far too old and stuffy, _un_fashionable! Here came the Cut-glass Age, where everything is as cold, hard, transparent and beautiful as its namesake.

After the world war the rafters seemed to have been torn out of the burning wreck of the sky—all that was left was rubble and young men who returned from the war-front empty-eyed, young men who returned from their untouched barracks, impatient as they had waited for their imagined decorations, untethered from their posts of waiting, women of the east who glittered with a certain coolness, women of the west who were waiting for their dreams to return to them, waiting for the sun to come out of the bruised Montana dusk, and old men, who drifted, withered and wandering by the seashore. These are the ones who spent their lives in the Jazz Age, raveling and unraveling, reveling and un-reveling.

How strange it is.

I left the ragged edge of the world that was the mid-west; all the pretty horses in the falling light, all the dust and shimmering images that are mirages out of heat and alcohol, goodbye my darlings, for I must live again. Is there any such thing as One True Love?

Later I grew to worship Barbara LaMarr briefly, from behind the hedges of my dreams.

She was an understanding little dreamgirl.

I took a train, out of the red winding wind of the west and to the east. Perhaps I was hoping to find something, maybe I was running; I do know I went to parties to cover up the quiet of life.

Summertime was sprawling, summertime was everywhere. It swore to me never to die, but I realized it was futile after all, winter is everywhere too. Winter is in the alleyways of New York, there are vagrants with no faces but grimy knees, patchwork ladies who gather old newspapers, it is in the metro of 4 in the morning. It is when we remember what hurts us with our rejection. It is when what nourishes us destroys us.

I'm an honest man, call me Leopold then. This is plain language from honest Leopold; all this is true—why, it's history! And it hurts me all the time.

New York was full parties and life and light and noise, I played the piano in crummy little jazz bars and doubled up as security when the proprietor was busy getting himself drunk. That's why all my best friends were men of dubious background: bartenders and chain smokers. I suppose entertaining at a bar could never be called respectable work, but I was a psychologist too. Drunks are amazingly open, liquor dissolves their inhibitions, I have seen the short-winded elations of many men and their abortive sorrows—do I have any of my own? I have secrets, this is a long and winding story--perhaps you were an eye in the wall long long time ago.

I met him at a party, the host was a paunchy man and well liked for his liquor. His name was Biloxi and he made boxes, all kinds of boxes, the most beautiful ones, I purchased one on impulse once. It's still on the kitchen table which I hardly use. I admire its cleanness, its limitations. Its emptiness. I think I shall buy gift for someone and send it along, ribbon and all to the merry recipient.

But never mind, who is _him_?

* * *

The pitful of oboes, clarinets, saxophones and flutes and piccolos was heaving with life, and they played a celebrated recent piece—_The World History of Jazz_—how impossibly appropriate on hindsight. History repeated itself. As it always will until time winds itself down to nothing but a lone maddeningly creaking axel.

I was wandering about on the lawn, the wide open lawn, bobbing with Japanese paper lanterns; a lady in trembling lace, face painted like a jester stepped onto the immense wedding cake of a stage and began to sing.

Raucous shouting stops and the blue gardens thrum with conversation in hushed voices, the man on my left nursed a mysterious bottle hidden behind a paper bag, and half his face was muffled my his large red beard, the man on my left was very young and music came pouring out of ears, dark and eager.

He turned to me when at last the music stopped its uncatchable rhythm, applause came pleasantly dissonant, "Soooo, how'd you like that? It's Adam. Cub reporter."

"Call me Leopold. I thought it—well, no, wait. If this goes into whatever you're writing I should at least compose my thoughts, right?"

He laughed, brash and warm.

"Oh well, go on then," and rummaged around his coat pocket for a small notebook.

"It was a good melody, and yes, the last notes are exactly the same as the first—it's like being an insomniac waking up to a dream to listen to it."

"Any more?"

"No. Be as succinct as possible, and if you don't mind me saying this the same goes for your writing."

"Are you a musician then?—let's go elsewhere, it's quite noisy here."

"Yes indeed—the kind in grubby bars." I said getting up. We drifted off to the far side of lawn and talked there for the remainder of the night about nothing in particular.

So ends another Saturday night.


	3. Chapter 3

3

There are frogs billowing with the mellow organ sound of the earth, under bridges water shimmers with the light of the moon and on this dark night houses are quiet as stone, blind as moles and dreams sublime as astonished honey. The dead are sleeping in California under grape-grown soil, the dead are sleeping under the sometime snow of the far north, the dead are resting and feet tread silently throughout the night.

Over the hills and far away a jazz band is playing.

A lady full and roiling with liquor is dressed in white, stumbling home and no one cares.

The orchids of a private house are full and rising into the night.

Adam is dreaming and Leopold is half-dreaming.

I never truly sleep; I just lie there and wait for morning, that's how I've passed centuries. Stumbling around in the semi-light-dark, waiting for morning.

When the king slipped away of old age I went back to my father, back under the great green wood; he offered me no counsel but said that a man's life is his own to live and others can only guide him.

I suppose that's when I learned—or perhaps _began_ to learn—that all but gods are men, for anyone can die quietly away, even elves. The heart may not stop beating, but it no longer knows for what cause it beats, the beating becomes monotonous, it becomes a joy to no one and a disturbance to the mind.

I don't think I ever made the confessions to anyone. Nor the other to me—it's a sad kind of resignation, when something as insurmountable as time interrupts the ideal, by then all you can do, all you have to do is accept it. But I think my father might have known; we've always been quietly communicative in that sense—I've never seen him look so sorry, and I was sorry in return. For what? For having been born what I was or for the heart that is uncontrollable and traitorous, I'll never know.

When my father sailed for the Havens I left with him, but when I returned—here lies another great tragedy, Gimli died; that staunch old rascal, he only knew my sadness, not what caused it but nevertheless made things better with his wholesome joy—when I returned I took one look back and said my father as he waited by the shore: I'm a wandered you know, a foolish little wanderer, and I will be until eternity beats it out of me.

My lone boat beat on, against the current, back into the past.

* * *

_-When something lives forever, there is always the threat that what has happened will happen again. And in that the future can be read as clearly as memory._

--I'd like to be an elf, Eldarion said, tumbling towards me.

I reached for his small hands, white and alabaster, and in the evening glowing like subtle stars. –Oh but then you'd have to think about tomorrow for eternity.

--I don't mind.

I said softly and leaned into the wind—Eldarion, Eldarion, you would have to leave the world behind.

--But I am brave enough to forsake it; we all must, and watch me…!

He grew old, frail like a leaf and tumbled far, far from me.

Leopold woke up with a cry and sob; they really did have that conversation so very long ago, but the boy had only crawled into his lap and laughed at him for being gloomy, then Gimli had burst from the bushes with a blueberry tart procured from the kitchen for the child.

He eased himself out of bed, below he could hear the soft step of old Mrs Morgan bustling around preparing breakfast for the lodgers of the worn brick house. The other lodgers were arising; he heard Billy Payne strike a match against the wall in a room next to his. Morning cigarettes for the sleepyhead; morning sorrows for the newly-awakened, and morning breakfast duties for the old widow downstairs.

After a meal of toast and butter, well-mixed with the chatter of lonely young men and morning papers he left for the bar: two buses, heaving and clanking with loose metal bits, down the long busy streets, romantic young women strode up and down the merry boulevard and men were either hopeful or established and satisfied in their sleek cruisers, sliding by behind glazed windows.

The bar-tender and the singer were already present and sweeping back and forth over the creaking floor-boards as they sighed in tandem with the Victrola's wearied waltz.

--Crank it up for us, Leo! Called Ray; Mary Reed, who went by the stage name of Ruby, twinkled with the many winking rhinestones on her gown, under the weak fluorescent light they were obviously cheap replicas of diamonds.

--How about I played for you instead?

--That'd be sweet, Lee. Said Mary who liked to come up with nick-names and used 'Honey' on strangers.

And after another waltz they all sat down to have lukewarm water, all the while pretending it was perfectly chilled martini, but they laughed and were familiar and were happy anyway. This happened every day.

* * *

In the day there are few customers, Ray and Mary dance some more: foxtrot, waltz, any dance they know of. Leopold writes sonatas, concertos and poetry, more songs for Mary to sing. Ray occasionally experiments with new mixtures, sometimes these cocktails sell like hotcakes and sometimes they don't.

On other days the bar only opens at five, on these days Mary might work as a waitress or line up for an audition at the theatres that line the fancier side of New York, Ray might wander around the park and be as philosophical as ever a bar-tender could be, he also doubles up as a caddy for the rich anonymous men who while away their free time at golf.

Leopold writes more concertos and is working his way up to the ranks of musical genius, according to Mary, this usually happens in his room, or it could happen at the docks as he watches sailors load and unload and go through the motions of a mundane, but otherwise useful life. Leopold feeds ducks at the park, or he stays home to help Mrs Morgan keep the house clean. Sometimes he's dreaming and on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Mondays helps banks with their bookkeeping from his tiny corner of the universe labeled: Part-time clerk.

* * *

One night Adam stumbles in for a drink. For this hopeful young cub-reporter it's been a long hard day chasing down news all around the precinct. Alcohol keeps the sorrow from biting, for it let's the sad tell of what is dear to their hearts. 


End file.
